


Souvenir

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, On the Run, Post-Series, dirty sad motel sex, on the run tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 01:56:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4460921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To be honest, the thought of trekking across the country with her forever seems favorable to any other option, but he knows she is tired. It's been seven months. She is exhausted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Souvenir

His skin is still raw with sunburn and the scratchy motel towel rakes across his deltoids, making him hiss. After drying off and securing it around his waist, he elbows his way out of the tiny, dimly-lit bathroom and finds her standing at the fold-out ironing board in the closet by the door, ironing a shirt.

Their wardrobes now consist solely of souvenir hats and t-shirts and one or two faded pairs of jeans, with a hoodie they share between them. They each own a denim button-down shirt; hers is on the board before her and she's wearing his. 

"Hey," she says without looking up. His shirt hits her just above her knees and he is surprised, as always, at how small she really is. He worries that she is exhausted. That one day, very soon, she will realize that she does not have to be Atlas, holding up the world in a button-down three sizes too big.

"Looks better on you than on me," he jokes.

"That's not possible," she returns with a smile. Her mood seems to have improved since he's gone in for a shower. When they'd checked in at the hotel (one room, non-smoking for Mark and Johanna Davis, please, we'll be paying in cash), her lips had been creased in a thin line across the darkly-freckled landscape of her face and she'd sighed wearily as she pulled the single duffle bag from the backseat and taken one last slurp of the 44oz Coke in a Sinclair cup that rested in the driver's seat cup holder before depositing it with unnecessary force into the trash can out front.

"All mine were dirty." She gestures to the rumpled pile of shirts on the king bed, pulled from the now lifeless duffle that contains their worldly possessions. At the Grand Canyon they'd gotten matching shirts, nondescript gray with colorful Kokopelli dancing behind the letters proclaiming the landmark's name, in adult small and large. She'd bought a youth extra-small too, when she thought he wasn't looking. He doesn't know where it is now.

"We'll have to find a laundromat before we leave tomorrow," she continues.

"Saw one on the way in," he tells her. "What, you're not gonna wear that the rest of the trip?"

He regrets his word choice instantly and they both freeze for a moment at the insinuation that this marathon of theirs could actually have an end one day. They haven't, as a rule, really talked about their situation: what they're doing, how long they'll be doing it, if they're ever going to slow down. To be honest, the thought of trekking across the country with her forever seems favorable to any other option, but he knows she is tired. It's been seven months. She is exhausted.

"What if you need it?" She has always been good at getting them back on track.

"I won't."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

"What are you sure of?" She doesn't look up when she asks this, stares at her denim shirt on the board, thin and smelling of cheap detergent.

He wants to say “nothing”, because it's almost true. But he is more sure of his devotion to her than ever before, more sure that he can't do anything without her beside him, more sure that there is no one more magical than she is.

"I'm sure that your hair is redder than the surface of Mars."

She quirks an eyebrow but lets him go on.

"I'm sure that you have more freckles than there are stars in the Milky Way."

"Don't get soft on me, Mulder," she whispers gently. She has stopped ironing.

"Trust me, I have the opposite problem," he jibes.

"What else are you sure of?" She leans on the ironing board and he can see now that she hasn't buttoned his shirt all the way. The tanned slope of one of her breasts peeks out from the shirt that is drowning her.

"I'm sure that I love you," he says.

She looks down, smiles, lets out a long puff of air. She knows, of course. They'd said it a thousand different ways before they'd ever actually said it. She’d been the one to truly say it first, he remembers-- it had been unexpected, one morning on her way out the door as a secondhand thought, a perfunctory statement.

He says it all the time now, as a thank you, as a hello, as a brief goodbye when they go into separate bathrooms in dingy gas stations and truck stops off the interstate. She stockpiles hers and says them all at once: against his shoulder as she comes undone, once like a prayer after they'd almost spun off the road a rainy afternoon in South Dakota.

She does not say it back now, but he doesn’t mind. That would seem false, forced, and she is many things but ingenuine is not one of them. She is both solid and liquid when she walks towards him, her bare feet brushing against the ugly motel carpet. She undoes the remaining buttons slowly, her hair falling in front of her eyes. She is letting it grow long and she can almost braid it now.

He loves it. He hates it. He is not sure of either of those things.

He is already hard against her inner thigh when she straddles him, kisses him, works her hand up and down between them and positions him at her entrance. She doesn’t like foreplay lately. She sinks down onto him and breathes out slowly. Then she begins to move, grappling at his back for purchase, fingernails biting his shoulder, and he hisses.

“Sunburn.” He curses.

“Here.” She stands, and suddenly he is freezing cold. She climbs onto the bed on all fours and looks at him expectantly over her shoulder. He cannot stand up fast enough. Their coupling has always been a balance of control, a give-and-take, never about power or ego. However for purely logistical reasons, she is usually on top, and a chance to feel her like this makes him heady with need.

He keeps one foot on the floor and puts one up on the bed, and when he enters her she purrs and squares her shoulders like a housecat. He stays there for a moment, hands at the perfect hourglass of her waist until she wriggles against him, and then he begins to move, gaining speed and intensity with each thrust.

She hums in her throat and the pitch moves as he enters her over and over. He reaches around and palms one of her breasts, and she yelps and slides herself back against him. He lets her drive for a while, letting out a low shit as she collides with him.

“What else are you sure of?” she asks again, her hair tumbling into her eyes as she turns to look up at him.

Her low bedroom voice makes something in him stir, it always has, and he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her up onto her knees, her back flush against his chest. He nips at her earlobe and says, “I’m sure I want to make you come.”

Her eyes slide shut and she reaches back blindly, her fingernails raking through the hair at the nape of his neck. He thrusts into her shallowly and reaches around to slip his hand between her legs and she comes, the force of her orgasm knocking her back down onto all fours and rendering her limp beneath him as he follows close behind.

After a minute he collapses beside her and he thinks he hears her say, “How long are we going to do this?”

“As long as you want,” he says with a crooked smile, even though he knows it’s not what she means.

“I don’t know how much longer I can run.” Her voice is thick, the way it gets when she tries not to cry. She sounds small, and he knows she hates is when she sounds small.

He gathers her into him and she rests her head on his chest, twines their legs together. The slickness between her legs dampens his thigh. He kisses her temple, the top of her head, and wonders vaguely where the youth extra-small Grand Canyon t-shirt is.

He will look for it tomorrow when they go to the laundromat.


End file.
